Metrics, successes & flaming disasters in digital marketing

iAds v. Mobile AdSense

Toward the end of Ben Parr’s post at on the nascent mobile-advertising battle between Apple (who recently acquired Quattro) and Google (who recently acquired AdMob) he says “Google’s greatest advantage against Apple is that it has more relationships and experience with web-based advertising, and it already has the technology to back it up.” But, then again:

“If tomorrow Apple launched an ad platform for iPhone and Google launched a comparable one for Android, Apple would win simply because it has a larger base of iPhone and iPad users to advertise against, making it more enticing to developers and advertisers alike. That advantage cannot be understated.”

But it’s not just about ad-sales experience or smartphone market share. It’s also going to come down to corporate DNA, and who’s wiring is better suited to capturing the types of ad dollars being spent in mobile. If mobile advertising is driven by targeting for local advertisers and retailers offering coupons — the transactional, direct-response arena that it dominates — Google will win big. If national and global marketers put their wallets behind building brands and stimulating (rather than harvesting) demand on mobile devices, I’m putting my money on Apple.

1. The extension of what has come before in a new medium. The banner is a great example as is the pre-roll video ad.
2. The medium-specific product that has no analogue in other formats. Sponsored search ads could be considered as an example of this (although some would say this is yellow pages 2.0)

Every year was to be the year of mobile for the past 5 but no one could create the ad product that harnessed the increasingly important role our phones played in our life. The 300×50 strip on the bottom of a mobile-optimized browser page or app just feels like a category 1 ad. What apple seems to be playing with feels more like category 2. If they are successful, I agree Apple stands to win. Although Google has proven themselves to be good a taking a business model and making it better. Just ask Overture.

Great post, Chas (as always). I completely agree that the success of one platform vs. another will depend on what ‘type’ of media ends up being more successful (DR vs. branding). I suspect in the end, it will be a mix of the two.

My only hope is that we as an industry have learned from what worked/didin’t work online, and translates this to success on mobile.

Some interesting tidbits coming out regarding Apple’s philosophy on this new ad platform, as well as some changes to it’s developer TOU’s that could prevent rival mobile ad platforms from targeting individual users.

The big thing that iAd really does is it brings new thinking into the capabilities of mobile display advertising and it wasn’t brought to you by Google. Google has been badly lagging in all aspects of mobile and Apple probably saw the lack of innovation in the mobile advertising market and decided to put their stake in the ground. Let’s also be clear here that mobile display advertising isn’t yet a billion dollar business, this isn’t about the money for Apple but reshaping the industry as they saw fit.

“Notwithstanding anything else in this Agreement, Device Data may not be provided or disclosed to a third party without Apple’s prior written consent. Accordingly, the use of third party software in Your Application to collect and send Device Data to a third party for processing or analysis is expressly prohibited.”

As I understand it, Apple is arguing that app makers can’t pass along information that incorporates each phone’s “unique device identifier” to ad networks and measurement companies.

This doesn’t expressly prohibit ad networks from selling ads, but it prevents them from selling targeted advertising, which is close to the same thing when it comes to mobile devices. The same problem would plague analytics companies, which might be able to compile very broad usage info about apps, but little else.